ROYCE. ] TREATY OF MAY 6, 1828. 237 
Jabored under a peculiar inconvenience from the repeated appropriations 
made by Congress for the purpose of holding treaties with them hav- 
ing in view the further purchase of lands. Such action had resulted in 
much injury to the improvement of the nation in the arts of civilized 
life by unsettling the minds and prospects of its citizens. Their nation 
had reached the decisive and unalterable conclusion to cede no more 
lands, the limits preserved to them by the treaty of 1819 being not more 
than adequate to their comfort and convenience. It was represented 
as a gratifying truth that the Cherokees were rapidly increasing in 
number, rendering it a duty incumbent upon the nation to preserve, 
unimpaired to posterity, the lands of their ancestors. They therefore 
implored the interposition of the President with Congress in behalf of 
their nation, so that provision might be made by law to authorize an 
adjustment between the United States and the State of Georgia, releas- 
ing the former from its compact with the latter so far as it respected 
the extinguishment of the Cherokee title to land within the chartered 
limits of that State. 
The response! of the Secretary of War to this memorial was a reitera- 
tion of the terms of the compact with Georgia and of the zealous desire 
of the President to carry out in full measure the obligations of that com- 
pact. The manifest benefits and many happy results that would inure 
to the Cherokee Nation from an exchange of their country for one be- 
yond the limits of any State and far removed from the annoying en- 
croachments of civilization were pictured in the most attractive colors, 
but all to no purpose, the Cherokees only maintaining with more marked 
emphasis their original determination to part with no more land. See- 
ing the futility of further negotiations, the Secretary of War addressed ” 
a communication to the governor of Georgia advising him of the earnest 
efforts that had been made to secure further concessions from the Cher- 
okees and of the discouraging results, and inviting an expression of 
opinion from him upon the subject. 
Governor Troup’s threatening demands.—Governor Troup lost no time 
in responding to this invitation by submitting * a declaration of views 
on behalf of the government and people of the State of Georgia, the 
vigorously aggressive tone of which.in some measure perhaps compen- 
sated for its lack of logical force. After censuring the General Govern- 
ment for the tardiness and weakness that had characterized its action 
on this subject throughout a series of years and denying that the Indians 
were anything but mere tenants at will, he laid down the proposition 
that Georgia was determined at all hazards to become possessed of the 
Cherokee domain; that if the Indians persisted in their refusal to 
yield, the consequences would be that the United States must either 
assist the Georgians in occupying the country which is their own and 

' January 30, 1824. 
2 February 17, 1824. 
3 February 28, 1824. 
